Through reading this week’s chapters, I found myself being excited to pick the book up again. Once they got onto the Pequod I found myself getting a little bored in the reading compared to the chapters earlier that revolved around Ishmael and Queequeg. However, after chapters 41 and 42 I have become excited to read more and honestly shocked with how much I have been enjoying the book. From this week’s chapters the one that I kept coming back to was chapter 44, where Ahab is in his cabin going over the ways that he might be able to predict where Moby-Dick might be and when. The quote that stood out to me was at the end of the chapter, when Ahab rushes out of the room, “ God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates” (Melville 220). This passage shows how self destructive Ahab’s obsession with this whale has become for him. Melville using the word creature here is something that stood out to me because it separates Ahab from this “creature” full of vengeance within him. The mental struggle Ahab has dealt with since losing his leg to Moby-Dick is something that has taken over his every thought, making his decisions completely irrational and quite frankly ridiculous. But this is a creature, as Melville says, that he created. The whale was acting out of pure instinct yet Ahab has turned this into a personal attack, Melville does a wonderful job at making this quest for Moby-Dick not just a physical adventurer, but also a projection of Ahab’s inner torment. This also makes the blind commitment from most of the crew on the Pequod even more terrifying. That with just one speech from their captain they are ready to take out his revenge on something that is innocent. Ahab has created this creature within himself that is full of hate and revenge, and as he fixates on that he also forces it onto his crew making whatever he says correct without argument. This reminds me a lot about what is happening today, and the more we read this book the more I am able to see the connections.